🐿️ TREE 716: Who’s in charge of your free time?

A thing I’ve learned about ADHD is that it’s not so much a deficit of attention but an inability to control where I direct my attention. If you’re ‘normal’ when it comes to attention, you would be amazed at how fast I can jump from what I mean to be doing to being deeply engrossed in something unrelated. All it takes is a little flash of ‘squirrel’.

I turned 50 in November. If I only live to 100, I’m halfway done.
It’s a birthday that makes a person contemplate.

Every week I spend
40 hours at my job,
49+ hours sleeping,
40ish hours doing the stuff of life,
which leaves less than 40 hours in which I’m free to choose what I do.

That’s a decent amount of time, except
I’ve been letting squirrels direct too much of it,
one squirrel especially.
Over the past couple years I’ve successfully
eased myself away from almost all social media.
Then last year Substack launched Notes.
In the hours I spent reading and tapping in Notes
which left me with nothing but a wish for
my time back
I could have read two or three
good books of my own choosing.

Here’s the result of my contemplation:

1. It’s my life and

2. I, not the internet, will choose how I spend it.

In late December, I banished Substack
from my home screen and replaced it
with the Kindle app.
This, along with regular reminders to myself,
will, over the next few months,
wither the influence of the Substack app in my life.
Soon it will be sitting dormant in my app library
along with the other social apps,
only used if I actually need it.

Who’s in charge of your free time?
If it’s not you, what are you going to do about it?

More tomorrow.

In my first week back to work Spotify introduced me to Girlhood. This is the perfect end to a delightful album.

In case it’s not clear. The Substack app is my squirrel. You might have an entirely healthy relationship with it.

Happy new year!
Jeff